


Everything I Touch

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: 601 Reaction Fic, Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 06:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4381262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt came back to Lima to win Blaine back, but everything's changed and he doesn't know how to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything I Touch

They’re lying on Kurt’s bed, staring at the ceiling. The door is closed against the rest of the house, although his Dad is out anyway and Carole is at work. Still, the door remains firmly closed. Rachel flattens her shorts over her thighs again, across her stomach, and crosses her ankles. Kurt sighs softly and turns his face to look at her, sees her staring back, the deep brown of her eyes implacable.

“What do we do?” he asks, voice cracking in the lingering silence. She presses her lips together into a sad smile. Her bangs fall in her eyes, down towards her hair that puddles on his pillow. It looks like silk, like something he wants to touch, but he doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice more subdued than he’s used to. He doesn’t know what to say. Inside, all he can see is Dave Karofsky making jokes about bears. He closes his eyes and turns his face to the ceiling again.

“Did you know?” he asks. He doesn’t look at her this time, doesn’t want to see the lies that may be in her eyes, wants to believe she’d have told him if she’d known.

“Did I know what?”

“About - about Blaine,” he says. He tries not to hesitate on his name, tries not to let it catch in his throat, tries not to choke on a syllable he’s said in so many different ways but never quite this bereft of anything. Inside, there is a hollow place that used to be a platinum band and a bright smile, and - and he knows he’s on the edge of crying, except he doesn’t know if he’s crying about himself, what he did, or about Blaine, or about the fact that just maybe he’s actually lost this time.

Rachel’s hand finds his and draws it down between them, squeezes it gently. “No,” she says. He can feel her eyes on him, blinks and feels the tears that roll silently down his temples. She doesn’t say anything for a long minute, and then, “He didn’t say - he didn’t mention him to me, Kurt. But it wouldn’t have been my place to say if he had. I’m not choosing sides.”

Kurt thinks perhaps that means she’s chosen her side already, and he presses his lips into a thin line, stays quiet until he trusts himself to not say something he doesn’t mean, something hurtful. He breathes out slowly, counts backwards from ten, and breathes in again. He squeezes her hand back, her hands soft and warm and equal parts familiar and alien to him, lying on his bed side by side. They haven’t done this since their first summer in the loft, when they both had reasons to be sad and alone, together.

“I guess I just,” he blinks again, feels the tension winding around his heart in fresh and unending spirals. “I wish I’d known. I feel like such an idiot. Let’s be friends, they say. Like adults. I’m not-“

He chokes and stops and breathes out heavily. Beside him, Rachel is silent. When he looks at her, her face is sad.

“You couldn’t expect him to wait,” she says gently. “You broke him, Kurt. He’s allowed to rebuild himself too. We’re all allowed to do that.” She slips into silence again, and then, “Remember when Finn and I were going to get married? We argued over chairs. And that night we had dinner with my dads, and your parents came? We argued about time spent in the bathroom. And pooping. I threw a hairbrush at him.” She laughs at the memory now, not as fresh and raw as it was. “We were super young. Like, we felt like such adults, but we were kids and we had no idea. I just - I know you don’t feel like kids anymore, Kurt. I know Blaine doesn’t. But in your heart? I just, I don’t think you knew? What it would be like? To have him with you all the time. Because I didn’t know how much of Finn was in my heart until that was gone. And maybe that’s how it is for you now. You don’t know how much you love him until perhaps you can’t stop.”

Kurt doesn’t try to stop the tears this time, but grips Rachel’s hand so hard it aches in his fingers. “I can’t do it to him again,” he says. “I have to let him go, don’t I?”

She shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know,” she replies. “Perhaps?”

He nods and lets her hand go, pushes himself slowly upright. She follows suit, smooths her hair and her shorts again, watches him curiously.

“Okay,” he says. “So what’s next?”

She bumps his shoulder with hers and flicks on her biggest smile. “Lesson planning!” she says, and he actually laughs, the sound alien in his ears. “Help me choose a theme, and you can have control of the whiteboard.”

In his chest, his heart continues to beat a fearsome aching bruised tattoo.

But he’s alive, and he’s moving on.

Because hurting Blaine more isn’t an option


End file.
